“In a notice to developers on Tuesday, Apple announced availability of new iAd options including pre-roll video and full-screen interstitial banner ads for iOS apps, as well as support for Russia and Switzerland,” Mikey Campbell reprots for AppleInsider.
“As noted by Apple, the new options are now available for developers and advertisers, opening up new avenues of revenue for so-called ‘freemium’ apps: ‘Now you can deliver highly engaging ads from leading brands. Optimized for your app, pre-roll video and full-screen interstitial banner ads are now available on iOS,'” Campbell reports. “Full-screen interstitial banners allow a single ad to be displayed as a full page of content either as a static element or a transitional screen sandwiched between two app sections… Video ads automatically appear for users in 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios and come in 15, 30 or 60-second blocks.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: In a semi-related note, for awhile now, off and on, we’ve been dealing with rogue third-party ad for apps (games, mostly; for example: Cookie Jam) that take over the iPhone screen which we MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT intend to run. These apps are not the same as described above as they don’t have a close button. This is a frustrating situation for users and for us. We hope third-party ad networks can finally get a handle on this issue sooner than later. We have no idea these ads are running until we get user complaints. If you see an ad that takes over your iPhone screen, please use the contact link above and let us know ASAP. Grab a screen shot for us if you can. We will then attempt to track down and block it. We apologize for the frustration.
As always, we recommend using our iOS app, which delivers a better experience for iPad and iPhone users than visiting the main web site in Safari for iOS devices.
UPDATE, 8:20pm EDT: We have found, and nuked, the offending Candy Jam ad! Thanks to all who helped us track it down!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lynn Weiler” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s iAd Producer now supports full-screen iPhone ads – May 23, 2014
Apple bringing full-screen video iAds to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch – March 5, 2014
This will probably allow higher revenue for app developers from the iAds (since most people successfully ignore the narrow banners at the top or bottom), which means that we may be able to get higher-quality apps for free on the platform. This may or may not be good for the platform in the long run, but as long as there is a way to pay for the app in order to remove these, we should be OK.
The cheapest unsubsidised iPhone can be had for as little as about $350 (4S on prepaid carriers such as Virgin Mobile). This segment of the market is rather frugal and not exactly fond of spending money on apps. To expose them to the quality apps of the iOS platform, it may be necessary to underwrite that with more conspicuous advertising. Such a market segment likely won’t mind those as much, but would appreciate the ability to be members of the exclusive iOS / Apple club.
And let us not forget that the iAd infrastructure delivers ads in a much more controlled, consistent and reliable way than all those that show up on that other platform.
Carriers will certainly like this. Video likes to gobble bandwidth, and for users on metered data plans, this may help push them over the limit and into those honey-sweet overages that carriers love to collect.
Q; How can I turn them off?
Exactly, Apple needs to put an jot out on iAds.
Advertising is a scourge.
OPT Out
Since you’re a troll why should you care. Go back to your Windoze XP.
Still trolling by calling others a troll.
Yeah, that’s my no.1 question as well—amongst all the ‘engaging’ iAd options for developers, is there an even more ‘engaging’ option for users to switch the damn things off?
If not, then I see a valuable marketing opportunity to develop a for-sale app named ‘iAD Killer’, and they’d have at least one customer—me!
ps. ditto for iBeacon—that’s definitely not going to run on any system of mine: “Big Apple is watching you”? No chance!
Most of the apps out there that have iAds also have an in-app purchase option that disables them upon purchase.
Disabling them without paying the app developer would be essentially circumventing the method of payment for the app.
Full-screen and long-running ads are over the line. With limited time and limited screen space, Apple should be smarter about how it serves its users. This is a clear step down in the user delight that Apple used to concentrate on in the past. Moreover, a user is NOT always guaranteed that the pay app is better than the free version. It would be nice if Apple allowed people a limited time trial on the full version of an app so that we could evaluate for ourselves. Instead, the only trial is bombarded with ever more intrusive advertising that a paying mobile customer cannot entirely avoid. That is reprehensible.
I will avoid calling it anything (and certainly calling it reprehensible) until I see how it plays out.
The full-screen ad implementation will depend entirely on the decisions of the app developer. These ads aren’t forced on the apps by Apple; they are turned on at specific places and specific times by the developer.
What I will wait for to see is how the developers implement this. There will always be free apps that abuse advertising in order to squeeze every fraction of a penny they receive from impressions or click-trhoughs. Then there are apps that use them unobtrusively and still manage to generate enough revenue to sustain their business model.
App Store is a massive playing field for developers, and it is a fairly level open market. Those developers who judiciously use the newly available advertising feature will be rewarded by the user loyalty, which will likely bring solid ad revenue without annoying users. The ones that abuse it to the hilt will likely rapidly get deleted. The main question now is what will be the ratio between the two; in other words, how many of those abusers will be there to pollute the heretofore superior mobile application market place.
Until I see that, I’m not ready to call anyone reprehensible.
The above is a troll, don’t bother answering it Predrag.
If I participate in ads, I don’t want them to be tailored for me. I do not want to be manipulated. I don’t mind seeing ads as long as they are consistent to the material I am viewing. However I don’t want to be “tracked” and then shown stuff I looked at, in a non-contextual way.
For example, this happens on Amazon.com. I look at a product, a little bit of research, make my purchase, then I see ads for stuff that I have already “moved” on from.
In short, ads based on pages I am looking at, not on me or where I have been.
While we are talking about ads. Viewster is a waste of time… I am visually attracted to moving pictures and it’s just junk and it’s frustrating.
Also I hate ads on ads. If I see a commercial because it’s cool, or a movie preview, I don’t want to see a pre-rolled ad for something else. What it does is make me leave and go somewhere else. I never get to see what I came to look at in the first place.
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